Michael Lee Allen
From:
Portage Park / Irving Park, Chicago, Illinois
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Posted 21 May 2022 7:56 am |
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Floyd Smith recorded multiple versions of "FGB", the first was with Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds Of Joy; Then the Hy-Tone label version in the YouTube link above, after that a much wilder version on King. Finally, on his only LP recorded in France he played it on standard guitar. He spent the later part of his life in Indianapolis where he led his own organ trio. Saw him many times there. He spent years in Bill Doggett's tenor-organ combo and Wild Bill Davis's organ trio, touring and recording, although LP liner notes didn't list the musicians back in the day. Not exactly obscure.
Also on YouTube you can find the obscure Parkway "Steelin' Boogie Parts 1 & 2" by the Robert Jenkins Trio and tenor saxist Eddie Chamblee's "Blue Steel" on Miracle. Lefty Bates, a mainstay of Vee-Jay recording sessions and one of Jimmy Reed's main backups, was still using a publicity photo with a lap steel on a stand set up in front of him long after most black guitarists who "doubled" had stopped using them. There was also a guy here who used the stage name Charles Aamir who played steel and had several instruments including a double neck National and a quad neck Stringmaster.
Then. leaving Chicago, I have some old publicity shots of black dance bands from Des Moines, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska where the guitarists have steels on stage next to their amplifiers.
Not all that unusual. Just like the white dance bands and small combos, the guitarist doubled on steel even though most of them only used it on a few numbers and a lot of the playing was simple thumbpicked stuff in E7th. Alvino Rey made that popular and the bandleaders and audiences wanted it. |
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Michael Lee Allen
From:
Portage Park / Irving Park, Chicago, Illinois
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Posted 21 May 2022 11:32 am
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FWIW the Wikipedia article on "our' Floyd Smith is a mess. There was another Floyd Smith from Chicago who was a recording artist and producer. The writer/researcher has combined information and dates on both of them without doing any research. Typical when you do an online search. So don't believe everything you read.
Familiar with "Louie Blue" and "Bogan, Martin, and the Armstrongs" but by then I was prepping for the first of four moves to and from California. I did miss a lot while I was gone. There wasn't much left when I moved back the last time and "The Pandemic" wiped out most of that. Almost all the old venues are torn down, burnt down, vacant lots, or gentrifying row houses. Hardly anybody my age or older left. I doubt live music here will recover in my lifetime. |
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